Global warming to help create new trade routes over the artic

[InRareForm]

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-global-unexpected-shipping-routes-arctic.html

[TDMVPDPOY]

only means more drilling

[Wild Cobra]

I forget.

How long was it the last time this Arctic trade route was open for commerce?

Nice Job Global Warming!

[boutons_deux]

Scientists Predicted A Decade Ago Arctic Ice Loss Would Worsen Western Droughts. Is That Happening Already? (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/30/2236751/scientists-predicted-a-decade-ago-arctic-ice-loss-would-worsen-western-droughts-is-that-happening-already/)

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/arctic-sea-ice-min-volume-comparison-1979-2012-v2.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/drmon.gif

Scientists predicted a decade ago that Arctic ice loss would bring on worse western droughts. Arctic ice loss has been much faster than the researchers — and indeed all climate modelers — expected (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/14/1594211/death-spiral-bombshell-cryosat-2-confirms-arctic-sea-ice-volume-has-collapsed/)“).

Where the sea ice is reduced, heat transfer from the ocean warms the atmosphere, resulting in a rising column of relatively warm air. The shift in storm tracks over North America was linked to the formation of these columns of warmer air over areas of reduced sea ice in the Greenland Sea and a few other locations, Sewall said.

Yes, sadly, I think we were correct in our findings, and it will only be worse with Arctic sea ice diminishing quickly. California is currently in a drought (as I watch every day — our reservoirs are at about 50% capacity right now, and I fear for the coming fire season, owning a house that backs up to greenspace and forest).


I am attaching a more definitive study (multiple fully dynamic models with greenhouse gas forcing) on the topic from 2005. The end result is about the same as the original 2004 study, just nailed down better.

Comparing current changes (2011 summer ice and 2011/2012 winter precipitation season) to the 2004 paper:

(1) Ice concentrations in August 2011 weren’t too far off from the ‘future’ in the 2004 paper. The “future” in the 2004 paper was 2050, so it seems we are moving faster than predictions (which has been seen in multiple studies of Arctic sea ice). That is likely due to the relatively conservative greenhouse gas scenarios that were used for the earlier IPCC assessments and associated simulations. Potentially the forthcoming AR5 will have more accurate/realistic/extreme responses in Arctic ice.

(2) Observed precipitation seems to be lower than in the 2004 simulations (50 – 70% of ‘normal’ in the Sierras vs ~85 – 90% of normal in the simulations) based on snowfall data from 2011/2012.

(3) The pattern of wetter conditions to the north of California is as predicted in the 2004 paper, Washington State reporting 107 – 126% of ‘normal’ precipitation, Southern Alaska reporting 106 – 148% of ‘normal’ precipitation for 2011/2012.

I think the hypothesis from 2004 and 2005 is being borne out by current changes. The only real difference is that reality is moving faster then we though/hoped it would almost a decade ago.



http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/30/2236751/scientists-predicted-a-decade-ago-arctic-ice-loss-would-worsen-western-droughts-is-that-happening-already/

[InRareForm]

scary

[DMX7]

See. We're worried over nothing.

[Winehole23]

For over a century, Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, have worked on creating a sea passage across the roof of the world. Crossing through twenty-eight designated sections, over five thousand kilometers, the NSR has been explicitly designed for Chinese-Russian cooperation for a decade. In 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping himself, while visiting Moscow, suggested naming the route the “Ice Silk Road,” one name it is marketed under today. One year later, China declared itself a “near-Arctic State,” raising the ire of the United States which, typically, responded to China’s foresight with mockery rather than action, with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declaring in 2019 that there were only two types of states, “Arctic States and non-Arctic States,” and that claiming otherwise entitled China to “exactly nothing.” The Russians, on the other hand, took action, appointing Rosatom operator of the route in 2018, issuing the permit regime in 2020, inaugurating test runs between Murmansk and Kamchatka in 2022, almost tripling their ports along the route from four to eleven, and, critically, launching four new nuclear-powered icebreakers between 2020 and 2024. Less than a decade after the declaration of the Ice Silk Road, Chinese ships are transiting it under Russian escort.

The United States did more than mock China. It officially rejected Russian ownership of the passage, claiming that the Vilkitsky Strait and others are “international straits” not Russian territory. The Russian government disagrees, considering the NSR a single corridor through Russia’s own inland seas, territorial waters, and its exclusive economic zone, all governed under the same laws, same rules, and same Rosatom administration. This is the US position on all straits it wants open, irrespective of whether or not they are in territorial waters; it made the same objection against Canada regarding the Northwest Passage and against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. In none of these have the Americans demonstrated an ability to change the fact that these straits are indeed effectively owned and operated by the countries that control the territories in which they lie.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/08/russias-arctic-route.html

[Winehole23]

No other nation on Earth possesses a single nuclear icebreaker. The United States fields two non-nuclear icebreakers, one built a half-century ago and the other in 2000. It purchased a third, secondhand vessel last year and ordered three more ships, projected for delivery in 2030 at a cost of approximately five billion dollars. A common misconception is that only Russia can bend the steel in the way necessary to build these ships. President Putin himself clarified the record on Navy Day, 27 July 2026, when he described Russia’s competitive advantage as one of timing as well as capacity. He explained that other “high tech countries” could build nuclear icebreakers, but that it would take years, if not decades, to do so. His statement understates the challenge faced by the United States: the men who built the last heavy icebreaker in the United States did so fifty years ago and their experience and expertise left the workplace when they retired. Thus, in 2025, when the United States ordered its newest icebreaker, it turned to Finland, as does almost everyone else: eighty percent of the world’s icebreakers are built in Finland and none of them are nuclear.

[Winehole23]

The Chinese moniker “Ice Silk Road” applied to a uniquely Russian chokepoint is an example of the ever-deepening close relations between both superpowers. Including Russia’s NSR as part of their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), even if only rhetorically, highlights the importance of connectivity corridors between the great powers and also emphasizes their non-Western nature. For here the United States is not relevant; payment is published in rubles, accepted in renminbi, and US dollars are uninvolved. It is yet another step in the steady dedollarization of the global economy; not by damaging the US Dollar, but by rendering it irrelevant. The route is not anti-Western, as Rosneft head Igor Sechin emphasized in Saint Petersburg; it is open to all customers, irrespective of alliance. South Korea noticed the advantages as well as everyone else, and purchased a ship in order to take advantage of it. South Korea’s first voyage on the NSR, along the Ice Silk Road, is with the newly renamed PanStar Acro; Rosatom granted its permit and it is due to depart Busan, South Korea, in late August, for several ports of call in northern Europe before heading back home.